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What’s The Point Of Having Friends You Can’t Have Sex With?

How It Led To This

Karina Pawlak
9 min readMar 20, 2025
Still from a stock video from Cyberlink

“We should go out for dinner and drinks sometime,” Lisa said.

We’ve been talking while watching our kids jumping on trampolines at gymnastics class. My son was 7. Lisa’s daughter was 12. Lisa talked about how her husband doesn’t clean up after himself, and she talked about how some girl at work was acting inappropriate with customers, and she talked about all the restaurants she loved. She really loved free breadsticks.

Lisa already pulled me away for coffee twice. I would have rather watched my son train in peace.

“I’ll leave Emily with my husband and maybe you can leave your son with your mom.”

My mom would take my son occasionally. When she did, I reveled in the alone time. It was a time I didn’t have to get ready for anything. I could go to the gym and be in my own head or lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. No schedule. No plans.

I thought about the last time I left my son with my mom and went out. It was with a hot guy. His interest in me was casual. I am pretty sure all he wanted from me was sex. The thought of that was a relief though.

But why?

I had enough on my plate: working, writing, training for powerlifting comps, and…

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Karina Pawlak
Karina Pawlak

Written by Karina Pawlak

Philosopher. Artist. Powerlifter. Author of Lifting Weights & Growing Organs. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1927023939

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